The Pulaski citizen. [volume] (Pulaski, Tenn.) 1866-current, 1887-11-24
THE GOSPEL OF HEALTH.
DIVINE SERVICES IN THE BROOK
LYN TABERNACLE.


LYN TABERNACLE.
DIR. TaInage Rejcices That the Number
of Christian Physicians Is Increasing.
sThe wild Oats of Youth Are Generally
Eown in the Liver.
BROOKLYN, Nov. 20.--The Rev. T. De
Witt Talmage, d. D., opened the services
at the tabernacle this morning by giving
out the hymn beginning:
Should coming days be cold and dark,
VIC need not cease our singing;
That perfect rest nought can molest,
Where golden harps are ringing.
He then explained a passage in the
thc Gospel Of St. Matthew, concerning
the inferior kind Of salt that was cast out
TO make walks Of, to be trodden under
foot Of men. The subject of DR.. Tai
IMAGES discourse was: ''The Gospel of
Health, " and his text from Proverbs vii,
D.; It'll a dart strike through his
liver" He said:
There is a fashion in serrnonics. A
Comparatively small part Of the Bible is
called on for texts. Most of the passages
Of Scripture, when announced at the
grooming of sermons, Immediately divide
themselves into old discussions that we
have heard from boyhood, and the effect
OH us is soporific. The auditor guesses
ri the start Just what the preacher will
Say. There are very important chapters
and verses that have never been preached
from. Much of my lifetime | am devot-
ing to unlocking these gold chests and
blasting open these quarries. We talk
about the heart, and preach about the
heart, and sing about the heart, but if
you refer to the physical organ that we
call the heart, it has not half SO much to
tio with spiritual health or disease, moral
exaltation or spiritual depression, as the
organ to the consideration of which Solo
mon calls us in the text, when he de
scribes sin progressing It'll dart strike
shrough his liver"
Solomon's s anatomical and physiological
discoveries were SO very great that he
was nearly 5000 years ahead of the
scientists of his day. He, more than
/ 900 years before Christ, seemed to know
about the circulation of the blood, which
Harvey discovered 1,619 years after
Christ. for when Solomon in EccleSiastes,
describing the human body, speaks of the
pitcher at the fountain, he evidently
means the three canals leading from the
heart that receive the blood like pitchers.
When he speaks in Ecclesiastes of the
silver cord of life, he evidently means the
spinal marrow, about which in our day
Doctors Mayo, and Carpenter, and Dalton,
and Flint, and Brown-Sequard have eX-
perimented. And Solomon recorded in
the Bible thousands of years before scien-
fists discovered it, that in his time the
spinal cord relaxed in old age, producing
the tremors of hand and head: ''Or the
silver cord be loosed"
In the text he reveals the fact that he
had studied that largest gland of the
human system, the liver, not by the
electric light of the modern dissecting
room but by the dim light OF compare
lively dark age, and yet had seen its inn
portant function in the God built castle OF
the human body, its selecting and secret
ing power, its curious cells, its elongated,
branching tubes, a divine workmanship
in central and right, and left lobe, and
the hepatic artery through which God
conducts the crimson tides. Oh, this
vi5al organ is like the eye of God in that
it never sleeps. Solomon knew of it and
had noticed either III yiYisection or post
niortem what awful attacks sin and dis
sipation make upou it, until with the fat
of Almighty God it bids the bo ly and
soGl separate. and the one it commands
to the grave, and the other it sends to
Judgment. X javelin of retsibutiop, Tot
gIancing off or making a slight wound
but piercing it from side to side It'll the
dart strike through the liver" Galen
and Hippocrates ascrihe to the liver the
most of the worlds moral depression,
and the word melancholy means black
bile
preach 80 YOU this morning the Cos
pei of Health. IN taking diagnosis of the
diseases of the soui you must also take
the diagnosis Of the diseases Of the body.
As If to recognize this, one whole book OF
the New Testament was written by a
physician Luke was doctor, and he
tiiscourses much of physical effects, and
he tells of the good Samaritan's s medica-
tion of the wounds by pouring IN oil and
wine, and recognizes hunger as d hin-
drance to hearing the Gospel, SO that the
5000 were fed; and records the sparse
diet of the prodigal away from home
and the eXtinguished eyesight of the
beggar away from home, and lets us
know Of the hcmorrhage of the wounds
of the diving Christ and the miraculous
Dostmortem fesuscitation. And any e5ti-
mate of the spiritual condition that does
not include also an estimate of the physi-
cad condition is incomplete, When the
.doorkeeper of congress fell dead from
excessive Joy because Burgoyne had sur
rendered at Saratoga, and Philip the
Fifth of Spain dropped dead at the news
in
Cardinal Wolsey expired as a result OF
Henry the Eighth's anathema, 1t wa'
demonstrated that the body and soul ar.
Sjamese twins, and when you thrill th'
one with JOY or sorrow you thrlll th'
other. We might as well recognize th'
fact that there are two mighty fortre5se
IN the human body, the heart and TIT
liver; the heart the fortress OF all tn
err.ces, the liver the fortress of all th
furics. You may have the head tiilet
with all iutsllectualities, and the ear witt
all musical appreciation, and the moutl
with all eloquence, and the hand witt
all industries, and the heart with all gen
erosities. and yet "a Cart strike through
the liver.
First. let Christian people avoid tn
mistake that they are all wrong with tso'
because they suffer from depression O
spirits Many a consecrated man ha
found his spiritual sky befogged, and hi
hope of heaven bIotted out, and himsel
pIllnged chin deep i'll the Slough of De
sm,nd, and has said: My heart is nc
RIGHT with God, and think | must hav
made a mistake, and instead Of being
child of light l am a child of darkness
No one can feel as gloomy as l feel an
lie Christian. - And he has gone to IN
minister for consolation, and he has co
aected Flavels books, and Cecil book:
and Baxter's books, and read and rea
and read, and prayed and prayed an
prayed, and wept and wept and wep